PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST, Part 2
Who Is Yasir
Arafat?
by Phil Dobson
(WebToday, April 23, 2002)-- If you were to ask someone where the trouble spots are in the world, an informed person will tell you, "The Middle East of course. Then there's Chechnya, Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia. There's fighting in India and the Philippines, and Sudan is a wreck." So, what's the one thing that all these places have in common? Stay tuned, we'll get to that in a moment.
As I promised last week; ARAFAT, Yasir.
Of all the bio's I found on Arafat, none could agree when or where he was born. Here's a sample: "Jerusalem on Feb. 17, 1929. "24 August 1929 in Cairo. "August 4, 1929, in Cairo, Egypt, not Palestine. "Born in 1929 in Cairo or Jerusalem, according to conflicting reports given by him, and my favorite, "24 August 1929, in Gaza Strip.
Born Mohammed Abdel-Raouf Arafat al Qudwa al-Hussaeini he was nicknamed Yasser, which means "easy" or "easygoing" in Arabic. Upon the death of his mother when he was 4, his father send him to live with an uncle in Jerusalem. At the time the city was under British rule by the League of Nations following World War I. After four years in Jerusalem his father brought him back to Cairo where an older sister took care of him and his siblings.
Before he was seventeen Arafat was smuggling arms to Palestine to be used against the Jews and the British. At nineteen, during the war between the Jews and the Arab states, Arafat left his studies at the University of Faud I (later Cairo University) to fight in the Gaza area.
In 1948, following the establishment of the state of Israel, Arafat studied guerrilla tactics and joined the Egyptian army. After their defeat, Arafat obtained a US visa and studied at the University of Texas.
Upon his return to the Middle East Arafat became active in elected politics and he joined the Muslim Brotherhood in 1952. After earning his degree in 1956, he worked briefly in Egypt, then resettled in Kuwait running his own contracting firm.
In 1958 he and his friends founded Al-Fatah, an underground network of secret cells which in 1959 began to publish a magazine advocating an armed struggle against Israel. In 1964 Arafat left Kuwait to become a full-time revolutionary, organizing Fatah raids into Israel from Jordan. Al-Fatah, the largest of the Palestinian guerrilla units, took control of the PLO in 1969.
In 1970 Arafat's thugs hijacked four airliners, flying one to Cairo and the remaining three to Dawson's Field in what was then PLO-controlled northern Jordan. Once European governments surrendered to their demands by releasing PLO terrorists in exchange for hostages, Arafat ordered the planes blown up.
1972 saw the PLO have a Dutch gas plant and oil refinery in Trieste, Italy blown up, along with a West German power plant. But that was nothing compared with the May 30 attack on Lod Airport in which 26 people were murdered. The attack was carried out by the fanatical Japanese Red Army under instructions from Wadi Haddad and George Habash (founders of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist organization. Their manifesto - The Liberation of Palestine by acts of violence against the State of Israel) and with the full support of Arafat.
And who could forget his coup de grace, Black September? Black September was an extremist group that emerged from within al-Fatah. On September 5, 1972 the group infiltrated the Olympic Village in Munich, Germany taking eleven Israeli athletes hostage. Two of the athletes were murdered in their room and the nine others were murdered at the airport when one of the terrorists threw a hand grenade into their helicopter during a botched rescue attempt by German officers.
On June 27, 1976, PLO terrorists hijacked an Air France plane and flew the Airbus to Entebbe, Uganda. The terrorists freed the French crew and all non-Jewish passengers leaving 105 hostages. Six days later Israeli Special Forces spearheaded a dramatic rescue mission freeing all hostages and losing only one soldier, Lt. col. Jonathan "Yoni Netanyahu. Yoni's brother, Benjamin Netanyahu, after becoming Prime Minister of Israel, had to sit across the table and negotiate with Arafat, the man responsible for killing his brother.
In March 1978, PLO terrorists entered Israel from Lebanon, murdering an American tourist and killing 34 civilians in a bus attack.
And then there's October of 1985 when the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro was hijacked by PLO Terrorists who killed helpless wheelchair bound passenger Leon Klinghoffer.
In 1990 the only so-called leader to back Iraq and Saddam in the Gulf War was none other then the PLO and Yasir Arafat.
These are only a sample of the better known PLO's terrorist actions. There are literally thousands upon thousands of terrorist actions taken over the past 54 years since Israel became a nation once again.
Last week Israeli officials gave the U.S. a cache of documents recovered from Arafat's headquarters that confirm that he and the PLO financed and oversaw terrorist attacks. As one high ranking Israeli official said, "In the West Bank, the more we enter, the more we understand. This is coming directly from Arafat personally."
Before Secretary of State Colin Powell's visit to the region last week the PLO, knowing that Powell would not see Arafat without his first denouncing the recent terrorist attacks, released the following statement; "The Palestinian leadership and His Excellency President Arafat express their deep condemnation for all terrorist activities, whether it is state terrorism, terrorism by a group or individual terrorism. This position comes from our steady principle that rejects using violence and terror against civilians as a way to achieve political goals.
Isn't that nice? Do we really need to look back on Arafat's (distinguished?) career to see this statement for what it really is? I think not. Arafat is the PLO and the PLO is Arafat. He's been nothing but a terrorist since he was a teenager and hasn't changed according to all the evidence.
How can you negotiate with a terrorist? Bottom line, you can't. With Arafat's control over the splinter groups allegedly weakening and Israel's enemies emboldening, another war seems inevitable.
Now to answer that burning question on the trouble spots in
the world and what they all have in common: Muslim governments
and/or regimes that want Islam to be the one and only religion
in their nations. Get a clue; we're in a war with radical Islam,
not with a particular country. Afghanistan is only the beginning
if we,re to win this war.
You may send comments to Phil at: dobson@madcrazy.com
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